Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid: for the Lord JEHOVAH is my strength and my song; he also is become my salvation. Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.-Isaiah 12 2-3

Monday, September 24, 2012

09-17-12

Gosh, this week has been a good week for a lot of reasons. The past
couple of weeks in general have been pretty dang rough, really, and it's felt
like so much of the work we'd been doning wasn't going anywhere. My companion
and I were musing one day while walking along the dusty empty roads of Marks if
we'd end up walking more in these two years of our missions then all the years
before our mission combined. Suffice it to say, we've walked a lot these past
couple of weeks :)

In trying to fingure out just what exactly I needed to be doing
better and how we could get the work rolling more in Marks, I ran across a talk
that was given to us as part of district meeting this past week and it
absolutely helped me a ton. It's a talk that Mom quoted in her talk at Mer's
funeral (it was a super fantastic talk too, by the way) by Brad Wilcox called
"His Grace is Sufficient". If you have the time, you should read it.
Even if you've already heard it, it's still a really good thing to read it
again. So awesome :) That gave me the support I needed to really do all the
things I didn't want to do this past week and keep on going.

And, of course, it's not all gloomy here in Marks. Far from it! Fall
has come and I love crunching through the leaves as we walk around. It's so
pretty here, and the trees are all changing from green to those cool yellows,
oranges and reds. Pretty darn cool. The weather is having a lot fo trouble in
making up it's mind, not really knowing if it should be really warm or super
chilly. It's pretty cool to think that this is the time of year when I came into
Russia and that I get to witness Fall all over again. so cool!

In addition to the trees, our investigator has been making some
really cool development in her gospel knowledge. She loves reading and
re-reading the brochures we've given her on the Gospel and always has lots of
good questions and she's already beginning to read the Book of Mormon again.
She came to church yesterday, which was way awesome, though I wonder how much
she heard...she's still got a bit of a hearing problem, though it's not nearly
as bad as it seemed to be that first time when we taught her. Teaching her is
always fun because I feel almost like I'm shouting but I'm shouting really cool
things like how the Gospel helps us repent and come back to God and how there's
a prophet on the earth today. Good things to shout, and the neighbors aren't
bugged, so I figure it's all good :)

For the first time this week too I tried signboarding for the first
time. We have out handy dandy big white board on which we wrote down "Have
you thought about these questions? 1. Does God know me? 2. What does God expect
from me?" It was really cool to see the responses we got from that
signboard, ebcause nearly everyone believes that there's a God and that He
knows them, but not many people had beofre thought about what maybe He asks of
them. Got some good conversations and a few numbers from that little 45 minute
escapade, and so we'll see how that goes and try it again this next week!

I had one question for my family, especially you Mom and Dad since
you're so gospel knowledgeable, how to dsitinguish in the Bible and the Book of
Mormon which things were done by God and which were done by Jesus Christ. I
know that when it says "Lord" or "The Lord God" that it's
almsot always Christ, but there are times where it just doesn't seem as clear
of, like in 2 Nephi 7 which I read this morning, it almost sounds like it's Christ
talking to himself through scripture. Does that question make sense? Anyways, I
hope it does and it'd be cool to see what thoughts you've got on it :)

Anyways, my time's up. Thanks so much for being the awesome family
and friends you are. I love you lots. :)